Josef Schmitt
German lawyer

Josef Schmitt (22. August 1875 – 1945), later Ritter Josef Schmitt was a German Lawyer, Knight, and Privy Councilor. He was born in Bavaria to Ritter Josef von Schmitt, who was the advisor to Prince Luitpold of Bavaria and a privy councilor. Josef Schmitt was, by 1921, Chairman of Fries & Hopflinger, the J. Mich AG in Bamberg, the AG Steinfels, formerly Hch. Knab in Steinfels, the H. Henniger Reifbräu AG in Erlangen and the Baumwollindustrie Erlangen-Bamberg AG in Erlangen. He was also a member of the supervisory boards of the AG für Licht- und Kraftversorgung in Munich, the Porzellanfabrik Kloster Veilsdorf AG , the porcelain manufacturer C. M. Hutschenreuther AG in Altrohlau and the Rizzibräu AG in Kulmbach. He was a member of the Bavarian State Committee of Deutsche Bank and Disconto-Gesellschaft and the Allianz and Stuttgarter Verein Versicherungs-AG, later Allianz.
Early life
Josef was born into a devout Catholic family, and was originally brought into law through his father, Josef von Schmitt, who was a Bavarian privy councillor an advisor to the crown, and his uncle, Gottfried von Schmitt, who served as member of the Imperial Council of Bavaria, which served as the aristocratic government body of Bavaria.
Education and beginnings
After Josef Schmitt attended high school in Münnerstadt and served one year as a military volunteer, he studied law at the University of Würzburg. In 1896 he became a member of the Corps Bavaria.
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This entry incorporates text from “Josef Schmitt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.